


Code United, Conflict Divided

by EaddyMays



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2502953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EaddyMays/pseuds/EaddyMays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A recently bitten woman is a Rogue Alpha Werewolf with no Pack.  She posses unique knowledge vital to the survival of all Werewolves, but she struggles to convince the other Alphas of the real threat that will cause their extermination.  The sudden appearance of an outsider tips the balance and whom to trust becomes a matter of life or death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Code United, Conflict Divided

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Código Unido, Conflicto Dividido](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2570465) by [EaddyMays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EaddyMays/pseuds/EaddyMays)



> *this ficlet was written in the spirit of peace and is dedicated to Wolfies everywhere*

      "NO!"  The cry of anguish wrenched from me before I could master my emotions.  My eyes blazed.  "What have you DONE?"  Gnarled, bloody heaps of flesh, hair and fur piled in steamy mounds at my feet, no longer even recognizable as the wolves they once were.  My knees wobbled and my stomach lurched as the stench reached my nose and I cursed my newly heightened senses.  “It was not to be like this.  Packs warring against each other, murder, destruction...we agreed.  At the Council….The Pact.  Don’t you see what you’ve done?”  I asked, incredulous that this Alpha could sanction such acts by her pack members.

     “Yes, I do see.  I see very clearly that the others of Our kind have done this to us -- and worse!  They broke the Pact first!  You dont know!  Their Pack attacked two of our young, Cole and Maddie.  They didn’t just kill them...they did….things….things I didn’t know another werewolf could be capable of.”  Her voice faded and I could see that it cost her to tell me this.  I knew Cole, bright and stubborn, but loyal and full of promise.  Maddie, sweet Maddie, so unlike the others, surviving against all odds she reminded me so much of -- so much of what I had lost.  I pushed back the memories and stepped away from the gruesome specter on the ground, as much to clear my head as to clear the foulness from my nose.  

     She took a breath to continue assaulting me with her seething fury, but I spoke first, “All my life I have watched people kill each other for what they claimed was “Right” and I believed them and it cost me everything.  I have lost everything I ever knew and loved.  I have nothing!  You have a pack.  There are other packs.  There are Hunters and Humans, but no place for me.  Every place is denied to me.  I know pain, I know the desire for revenge.”  

     “How dare you!  You just now Became!  Yet you think you can know in just a few months the pain and separation we have endured for years?  You know NOTHING,” she howled the words at me and from the edge of my vision I saw several of her pack members shift to werewolf form, emblazoned by her rage.  “You are correct.  You were not invited here!  You should not be here...be here among us pretending to teach us how to do things your way.  A new “Right” way.  But you are not Alpha here and it’s time you to learned your place,” then she curled her lips with a taunting snarl and she added, “Bitch.”  

     Never.  Never in my life….my other life….had any human called me a ‘bitch’ ...and lived to tell about it.  But these were not humans with human ways.  I reminded myself that ‘Bitch’ had a new meaning now that I was no longer fully human.  I decided to take the insults and taunts as compliments,  for by calling me ‘Bitch’, she had just admitted that I WAS one of them; females werewolves are Bitches.  I knew that feeding her wrath would accomplish nothing so I laughed, hoping to disarm her, making her see that she unintentionally admitted I was one of them by calling me a Bitch.  Many years of leading Hunters had taught me this much: being baited into rage will undermine anything I one to achieve.

     “A 'Bitch.'  Yes.  Thank you.  Though 'Alpha Bitch' is more accurate."  For a flash of an instant, I let my eyes fill with the amber that roiled within me.  “It seems we do indeed both ‘know my place.’  But what you don’t know is that your rage,” and I pitched my voice so the rest of her pack could hear me; more and more of them had been shifting as our conflict escalated.  “Your rage,” I continued, “against others of OUR kind is undermining the very thing you hope to achieve.  The cooperation among the packs is the only way to bring the change you claim you want.”  I searched her face for understanding.  “You can not go back in time to change the wrongs that were committed in the past.  No one can."

     “Who are YOU to speak to US about what WE can and cannot do?!  YOU have done those wrongs, too!  YOU, as a Hunter, have acted against us.  YOU are not one of us!  I cannot change what has happened, but I can exact revenge.  Some lesser packs want an apology, and yes, we deserve an apology, but we will not even get that little!  Werewolves were _used_ by the Hunters, _lured to trust_ and then _betrayed_.  So, we will make Them feel the pain They have caused Us.”  Her eyes took me in, gliding over my body, a look of mocking disdain turned the corners of her mouth into what might have been a sneer, but instead grew into a menacing snarl and I caught the glint of fangs.  Still, I resisted my urge to Shift and tear and fight with this Alpha, I knew it would only continue to feed the problems that divided us all and made us vulnerable.  If I Shifted now, I would lose any chance to make them see ….I struggled to hold on, but fighting against my own body weakened me.

     I fell to my knees in the dew damp soil of the clearing’s tall grass.  My stomach lurched and heaved dryly.  I had not fed in days and there was nothing left in me to purge.  My head felt as if it would split apart and I wanted to tear at my face to stop the pain bulging behind my eyes.   Over the sound of my own retching I heard laughter .... _howls of laughter_ , I thought, the phrase no longer a metaphor, but a reality.  My teeth cut into my lower lip and I knew the Turn was taking over, was casting aside the last of my humanity.  The urge felt good, it brought relief.  I would let go, Transform and tear them apart for their blind refusal to change, rip their flesh from their bones for their mockery.  

     I panted heavily where I knelt and watched her step to within inches from my face.  “That’s right!  You are weak!  You are no Alpha here.  It is time to end you.  Time to end the other packs who attack us.  It is the only way.  It is our way!  We will start with you and finish with Them.  The have earned our vengeance!”  Then she shifted, hackles raised, stance set to take me down.

     A primal scream cut the darkness in the clearing and another pack charged from the mist at the edge of the woods.  Their Alpha had time to utter one human word, "LiarrrRRRR!" he bellowed and the word morphed into a deafening growl as he shifted to an enormous gray-black wolf mid leap.  I saw the gleam of white, snapping teeth and the stinging red of fierce eyes as he eapt upon the Alpha, who had been a heartbeat away from ending me.  My ears filled with a cacophony of shrill barks, bitter howls, and the horrific tearing of flesh.

      _It has to stop.  They'll kill each other_ , I thought.  “You have to stop!”  But my half-shifted human words would change nothing in this death match, I had to meet them as one of them.  I had to Change.  

     The Shift took me with sudden ferocity, red eyes glowing beneath my coat of coarse, thick, auburn fur.  Bones pulled and pushed at flesh barely able to contain the rapid change and claws raked the earth in front of me.   I could no longer tell which werewolf was which, nor did it matter.   In that moment, it did not matter who had been wronged and even that BOTH had been wronged, as I knew.  I had only one thought:  I must intercede before they killed each other and ended all hope.  It was a death match, I knew that much.  These wolves would kill each other which is exactly what the Old Ones wanted.  Recklessly, she launched herself into the fray, desperate to end the battle.  

     I realized her mistake the instant I made it.  I did not know their savage ways of fighting and I was still weak, I was an outsider, and the werewolves, momentarily distracted by my presence, now had me as their common enemy and at their mercy.  They turned on me with savage intensity.  Their two packs, still divided on either side of the chaos erupting before them, crouched now in full wolf form watching with glowing yellow eyes, vicariously feeding their own inner beasts with every drop of blood shed by their Alphas.  Some of the wolves keened as if the fight pained them; others loosed eerie howls skyward, encouraging their Alpha to the kill; and others yet hunched and utterly still in shocked disbelief at the destruction unfolding within the werewolf packs.   Even as I fought, I was able to take all of this in, my senses now thousands of times more acute since I received the Bite almost a year ago.  In the clarity of that instant, I saw that I was powerless to stop the werewolves from destroying themselves.  Powerful jaws sank into my withers and twisted me onto my back.  The fight slowed, they knew they had me exposed and I knew I would die.  But not like this, I decided, not as a werewolf.  I summoned the last of my strength and shifted back to my human form.    

     Stunned by the unexpected change, the Alpha's froze long enough for me to tell them, "It is okay.  I would rather go forever than stay to see you keep destroying each other.  It’s what They want and I can’t --"  It was impossible to tell which Alpha leapt first for my now human, vulnerable throat.  I steeled myself for the inevitable grip of fangs I knew would rip open my neck and drain my life blood into the welcoming earth.  

     And then they were gone.  Vanished into thin air.

     "I thought I was dead," I said, though I did not realize I said it aloud until I heard a controlled, icy reply.

     "That’s funny.  So did I."

     I startled at the voice, not because I didn’t know it, but because I did.  I knew it, better than I knew my own.  Stepping out from beneath a towering pine at the edge of the clearing and I watched, stunned, as a cloaked figure nocked an arrow and drew the bowstring, making it creak with ready tension.  At the sound, every wolf froze in place, ears pricked alert, eyes locked on the approaching threat.  The archer strode silently across the clearing; moonlight glinting off the silver tip of the arrow ...an arrow pointed directly at me.  An cold tendril slithered down my spine and I sat transfixed.  My daughter.

     In the breadth of a moment, she was there, my daughter, towering before me like the pines all around us.  It was her. My baby girl.   _No_ , I thought.   _This is not the girl I remember, the girl I last saw laughing with her best friend about clothes and parties and boys. Sure, this is my daughter, but this is no girl.  She’s changed...hardened, likely by grief, I thought, but something...something’s not_\--  abruptly my thoughts were cut off.  

     "Take this. Put it around you,” she commanded, shrugging the heavy cloak off her shoulders.  “It’s wool, not fur.  Though for modesty’s sake, I trust you will forgive the irony,” and there was unmistakable bitterness in her wry smile.

     “Angel, wait….” I whispered to her.  She ignored me, turning to confront the werewolves,  I tried again, more urgently this time, “angel, please!”

     My daughter let out a sharp, unfamiliar sound, almost a laugh and she pitched her voice so it pained my ears still sensitive from the recent Shift.   

     “‘Angel’?!”  That laugh again.  “Definitely not an ‘Angel’, mother... but you’re close,” and there was a taunting lilt I had never heard from her.  Suddenly a rush of wind struck out like a slap.  Dirt and pine needles flew up around me.  I covered my face as a sound, like the crack of thunder, broke the stillness of the pre-dawn air.  I reached for my daughter, afraid some unseen threat was coming, I had to try to protect her.  But there she was.  Illuminated by the moon, her ebony hair torn loose from it’s braid and cascading down the middle of her back between-- I wiped my eyes with the edge of the cloak.  Her hair lay in waves between….wings.  Two dark blue-gray wings….yes.  My daughter...had….wings.  My daughter had Become.

     She stood, arms stretched out and I could see the buff colored underside of those wings bounce light from the moon upon the awed packs of wolves in shock before her.  They told me she was dead, that she died defending HIM, despite my warnings, she died, they said, for HIM, in his...oh dear god….in his arms.  She loved him and worse, he loved her.  I knew that now.  And rather than see her die, worse yet, be responsible for her death, he gave her the Bite.  There could be no other explanation.  He gave her the Bite and she Transformed into...this.  The wolves grew anxious and again she split the night with another piercing sound like a laugh….no.  Like a falcon, a Peregrine Falcon.  No one so much as twitched a muscle, shocked into stillness by the unimaginable.   _Apparently, I'm NOT the only one who doesn't know everything_ , I thought with with inappropriate mirth.  

     Without warning, my daughter leapt with graceful ferocity at the Alphas, who moments ago she had pinned to the ground with her arrows.  Silver tipped talons flashed out as she launched over them and she wrenched her arrows free.  Then she was in the air.  She angled her body to bank sharply and graze low above the packs of cowering wolves, who whined as she gyred ever wider around the clearing.  It was menacing.  It was...beautiful.  

     He -- _that boy_ \-- he had loved her.  He gave her wings.  I had learned enough since my own Bite to know that when we are bitten, our true inner nature is revealed and we Shape Shift into the creature we are meant to be.  The irony was not lost on me that I had become the very thing I had hunted, feared, and despised for so long.  Karma is a bitch, or so they say, and now I was one, too….literally.  

     But, her...my angel, whom I had mourned for dead, had Become.  But Become into a Falcon.  Never.  Never in all my years as a Hunter, had I heard of such; and no where in the Book, that book so coveted and guarded by the Old Ones, was there any mention of a Shifting into ---

     I stared at her.  One moment the blue-gray wings and dark brown back creating a deeper shadow against the pin-pricks of star light.  In the next moment, her spiral revealed her buff colored underside, dappled with brown flecks and reflections of silver gleamed off the tips of her talons.  My vision blurred with love, with regret, with the simple beauty of her.  Her there above us.  Then, faster than I could imagine, she rocketed toward the earth and my heart seized in fear that something was wrong and I would see her die before my eyes, helpless to stop it.  But suddenly, there she was.  With elegant grace that belied the powerful, falcon wings, she landed on the exact spot from which she first leapt.  She crouched, her wings folded around her, and then she stood, once more in human form….except for a black tear stripe cascading down her ivory cheek.  And I could see then, tawny feathers still cascaded down her torso to the tops of her legs, affording her modesty that otherwise would have me thrusting her woolen cloak around her and my own modesty be damned.   _That’s a pretty handy trick_ , I thought, _I’ll have to get her to show me how to do something like that._

     Her calm, yet completely authoritative voice interrupted my musings about modesty.  She held every eye of every wolf in rapt attention and said to them -- said to Us, “As you can see, things are not what you perceived them to be nor what you were taught they are.  Indeed, your strength has wrought much positive change, but your infighting threatens to destroy you and that is exactly what They want.”  

     She waited to let those words sink in past the awe she initially struck in us all.  Some began to move about restlessly, eager to hear her.  “There are Forces,” she continued, “who are working covertly to break you.”  There were murmurings at this and restive glances at me.  “Not Hunters.  Not True Hunters.  True Hunters, currently under the direction of my father, are---”

     At this, I flinched.  My breath caught in my chest and my heart felt as if it were crumbling in on itself.   _He knew she was alive and had not sent word to me?  Had he told her that I had Become?  Had her anger kept her away from me_?  There was so much I wanted to say to my sweet angel, so much to apologize for….Blood roared in my ears and I missed her words.

     “---which is why they need our help.  The Old Code is no more,”   True Hunters do not ‘Hunt Those Who Hunt Us.’  There is a new Code.  A Code by which we ALL may live and pursue happiness IF we work together.  Yes, there are still those who must learn and yes, they CAN be taught.  WE can teach them -- IF we work together.”  She turned then and looked to me.  She smiled and melted away every apprehension inside me with the warmth of the love for me I still saw in her eyes.  There were amends for me to make and trust to rebuild, but hope was renewed and hope makes all the difference.

     Before she continued, she spread her wings wide again and this time, the movement was encompassing rather than terrifying.  

     She said, “Only by Together Working and using our Transformative Powers will we persist.  Only by peace and patience with the great variety of each wondrous creature in our ranks will we Unite. And only United will we bring positive change and finally put an end the ruthlessness of those who seek power Via Conflict and Means of Totalitarian Violence.”

     No one spoke.  No one moved.  From within the groups of wolves, a lone howl erupted in a cry that called the packs action.  Heads reared back and the night was filled with cries and they were answered by distant calls, not just in the clearing, but throughout the woods around us, echoing off the hills, each call a beacon in hills.  Everything vibrated with energy and excitement.

     My daughter, this incredible person, came to me and I put my arms around her, timidly at first, afraid I would hurt her in some way; I didn’t know how to hug when wings were involved!  But I felt her laugh at my awkwardness and so I held her as tight as I could and it still did not seem like enough.  

     “Never again,” she whispered in my ear.

     “Never again,” I promised.  “United.”

     “Evermore,” she added.

     I broke our hug and asked, “Did you just make a _bird_ joke at me?!”

     “I’m just agreeing with you: we should stick together...” she replied.

     “You did it again!  Ach, that’s awful,” I said, laughing.

     “Sorry, I have a real talon for puns,” she quipped.

     “You keep this up and I’ll fly off the handle,” I said, trying to catch my breath.

     She shrieked with laughter, “STOP! Oh my god, mom, you’re terrible at it.  Just don't try. Please!”

     I did not doubt how silly we looked, doubled over with laughter, her in her feathers, me bruised and shivering under her scratchy wool cloak.  Yet, the laughter connected us, it began to heal us and it occurred to me that I had spent too little time of my life laughing.  But that night was a beginning of change...and I was going to start with me.


End file.
